Since the early 1980s, federal dietary guidelines have urged Americans to eat more nutrient-rich foods and cut back on fatty foods and highly processed “empty calorie” snacks such as cookies and chips. But those pleas have fallen on deaf ears. It's time to start thinking differently about how to encourage Americans to make smarter food choices—and a fine place to start would be cutting the costs of healthy foods in our supermarket aisles....
The remainder of this commentary is available at modernhealthcare.com.
Roland Sturm is a senior economist at the not-for-profit, nonpartisan RAND Corp. and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Derek Yach is senior vice president of the Vitality Institute.
This commentary originally appeared in Modern Healthcare on May 25, 2013. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
